What Are Time Sensitive Notifications? How to Turn Them Off or On on iPhone

Time Sensitive notifications are a special type of notification designed to ensure that you do not miss out on important updates that may require your attention urgently.

Notifications are part of how we keep an eye on what’s going on. They can remind us of something, recommend things to us or provide other timely information from the apps we’ve installed. They are designed to be short and timely.

You can get notifications from apps while not in use, regardless of whether your iPhone is locked or in use. People do not like interruptions. Some people may only want to be alerted when there is something important, such as a Find My alert, tracking or the Left Behind notifications.

You have probably seen Time Sensitive notifications show up on your iPhone and wondered what they are. You may also notice popup messages on your iPhone asking if you want to Turn Off or Leave On alerts for Time Sensitive notifications.

What are Time Sensitive Notifications?

Time Sensitive notifications have a higher priory status than regular alerts. They look like regular notifications, but they can override your Scheduled Summary or Focus settings.

Time Sensitive notifications offer a new layer of interaction with push notifications.

Some of the notifications are viewed as more important than others. They may need immediate attention. Some of them you can safely ignore. According to Apple, there are four types of notifications:

1. Passive: This is the least important notification type. They do not require any immediate attention. You can view them whenever. A good example is a restaurant recommendation notification.
2. Active: This is the default option. You will be alerted by a sound, vibration or a banner on the iPhone screen, depending on your settings.
3. Time Sensitive: These are important notifications that you do not want to miss. You can modify your Time Sensitive notifications settings, which I explain below.
4. Critical: This is an urgent type of notification related to health or safety. These are very rare. Local or federal government safety alerts are considered one of the critical notifications. App developers or other agencies need permission from Apple to use this notification type. So, only a handful of places can send these types of notifications.

Some examples of Time Sensitive notifications are:

• Reminders
• Package delivery notifications
• Food delivery or ride-share alerts
• Banking security notifications
• And more.

How are Time Sensitive notifications different?

Time Sensitive Notifications are different than regular notifications in these aspects:

• They will remain on the Lock Screen for one hour.
• They can override settings such as Notification Summary and Focus settings. For example, you can set it so that you can receive Time Sensitive notifications while in a Focus.
• Time Sensitive Notifications are delivered immediately instead of being stacked into a card in the Notifications summary.
• A text will be displayed on the top of the notification saying “Time Sensitive.”

How to enable or disable Time Sensitive notifications for apps

You can set the Time Sensitive notifications settings for each app. Here is how:

1. Open Settings and then tap Notifications.

2. From the list of apps under the Notification Style section, select an app to change its notification settings. I am going to pick Amazon.

3. Toggle on or off Time Sensitive Notifications.

Not all apps are designed to send Time Sensitive notifications. If you do not see the option, this means that that particular app does not send this type of notification.

How to use Time Sensitive notifications with Focus

Do you want to receive Time Sensitive notifications when you turn on a Focus mode? This is also possible. Doing so will enable you to get high-priority notifications when you do not otherwise want to be interrupted. Here is how:

1. Open Settings and tap Focus.

2. Select a Focus mode, like Sleep or Gaming, etc., that you want to customize and then tap Apps under Allowed Notifications.

3. Enable Time Sensitive Notifications.

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